Cnu's New Coach Hits The Track Running

NEWPORT NEWS — A Washington state native who just moved here from Indiana, Tyler Wingard is getting settled in as CNU's new track and field coach.

It's easy to wonder why Tyler Wingard left a Division I coaching job in track and field to take over Christopher Newport's Division III program, until you look more closely.

His old job at Valparaiso was indeed Division I, but the program was non-scholarship and had no track facilities. His teams practiced at two high school tracks for outdoor season and used an elevated walking track that ran around above the basketball court during the winter in hoops-ruled Indiana.

So to say he was impressed after touring CNU's Freeman Center and Belk Track at Pomoco Stadium would be a vast understatement. Wingard took the job in mid-June, filling a void created by the retirement of 25-year veteran Vince Brown a year earlier.

Former CNU track athlete and Division I coach Ron Garner took the job for four months last summer before resigning for personal reasons, and assistant coach Louis Johnson had served in an interim basis since October.

"Christopher Newport's got a great reputation, especially in track and field," Wingard said. "The facilities here are fantastic, the coaching staff and the support for the programs are outstanding.

"And it has been and is one of the premier Division III athletics programs in the country. So professionally, it's a great landing spot and personally I grew up in the Seattle area. And so it's nice to be back near tall trees and green and water."

As a collegian at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Wingard was a long and triple jumper who eventually added the javelin as he trained to become a decathlete. He competed in the javelin while completing his graduate work at SUNY-Stony Brook.

Wingard, 37, started his career as a math and physics teacher and track and cross country coach at a private high school outside Seattle, and later taught at the community college level. He became an assistant coach at Pacific Lutheran, taking on more responsibilities with the Division III track program there before being hired at Valpo.

In his six seasons at Valpo, Wingard's athletes broke 44 school records and 81 of them earned all-Mid-Continent Conference honors, including 13 individual conference titles and two relay championships.

He took his Valpo team to New Orleans during spring break in March, where the athletes volunteered for hurricane cleanup and trained in the evenings in preparation for a meet in Louisiana.

Right now he's busy getting acclimated to a new area, seeing who is returning to CNU for track this fall and reviewing the Division III NCAA rule book. He is very aware that the coaching situation needs to be stabilized.

"It can be a little bit unsettling and that's something we're going to have to spend some time, especially with the juniors and seniors, and work with them to make sure that they understand the program that we're establishing, that they have a role in sorting out what they're going to be doing for themselves this year, how they can help establish the new program without changing things up so dramatically on them that they're starting from scratch," Wingard said.

"I don't think it's going to be too dramatic a change. I hope to bring in some very positive changes to the program. But as far as how the student-athletes are trained and taken care of, it shouldn't be too drastic for the most part."

He is planning a mini training season this fall so he can get to know his athletes a little better and they can have some low-key workout time before the indoor season starts.

"It's nice to work with the ultra-elite athletes, but I think there's even more to be said for just generating a lot of improvement and whoever is the right fit for the university and for your program," Wingard said. "We had some good success with that at Valpo and I'm looking forward to setting that up here as well."

He said a lot of this coming year will be figuring out how to augment the system he used in the past to fit his new team.

"The long term goals for the program are to be national title contenders indoors, outdoors, cross country year after year," Wingard said. "So that culture needs to be established right from the start. So we'll start putting that in place.

"We've got to see who we've got here and get to work on recruiting and make sure we're moving in that direction." *

The Wingard file

TYLER WINGARD

OCCUPATION: Head track and field coach, CNU.

AGE: 37.

HOMETOWN: Gig Harbor, Wash.

RESIDENCE: Newport News.

NOTABLE: Spent the past six years as head track and field coach at Valparaiso University in Indiana ... Assistant track coach at Pacific Lutheran ... Competed in long jump, triple jump and decathlon at Occidental College and later SUNY-Stony Brook ... Medaled twice at the Empire State Games.